1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to mobile computing devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones, pagers, and the like, and more specifically, to a wearable device/appliance (e.g., a wrist watch) equipped with an interactive user interface that displays a watchface and enables watchface orientation in either of: circular and elliptical modes, in a manner that conserves display real estate for enabling the concurrent display of other textual/graphic content.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Computing, mobile and wireless communications technologies have been rapidly advancing-culminating in a variety of powerful user friendly devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones, pagers, etc. Today, it is possible to purchase handheld PDA""s, e.g., palmtops such as the Palm Pilot(copyright), that employ wireless communication devices and that combines computing, telephone/fax, and networking features. A typical PDA may function as a cellular phone, fax sender, and personal organizer and are pen-based, requiring a stylus for text entry. As such, these device incorporate handwriting recognition features and may even employ voice recognition technologies that react to voice input. Small devices such as the RIM 950 and the Motorola PageWriter 2000 pager use a small keyboard for input.
Today, the industry is striving to provide advancements by providing increased PC desktop-like functionality while both decreasing size and power requirements. More recently there have been attempts to incorporate some of the capabilities of the above devices into wrist watches. However, today, only special wearable watch devices are available that, besides time keeping functions, may possess a compass, or a Global Positioning System (GPS), or barometer, heart rate monitor, Personal Handy System (PHS) phone, pager, etc. There are shortcomings in these existing special function watches in that most of them are bulky, are mostly unconnected to the Internet or other PC/network devices, have limited battery life, and, are difficult to use. These currently available special function wrist watches additionally have user interfaces that are quite limited in what they can display. For example, in the context of setting time in digital watches, currently, the user is only enabled to set the hour and minute independently, with time only advancing in one direction. Furthermore, most of them have a 6 to 8 seven segment LED or LCDs which can be used to display 6 or 8 digits/letters, and have a small number of indicators that can display AM/PM, Alarm on/off, etc. only at fixed locations within the display. A few watches are currently appearing on the market that have slightly richer display characteristics. Regardless, these various shortcomings have to be solved, otherwise there is no compelling reason for these watches to become popular. The design of a wrist watch for mobile computing applications offers a significant challenge because the watch is a small device. That is, both fitting components and power supplies such as batteries into such a small volume and given the limited screen size of watches pose limitations that have be overcome. Solving these issues is worthy because the watch is an attractive form as 1) it is one of the few devices that a very large fraction of the population is already accustomed to worldwide, 2) is accessible almost all the time, and, 3) is hard to lose.
It would be highly desirable to provide a wearable device/appliance (a wrist watch) capable of providing time keeping functions equipped with an interactive user interface for displaying a graphic watchface in a manner that conserves display real estate enabling the concurrent display of other textual/graphic content.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a wearable device/appliance (a wrist watch) capable of wirelessly accessing information and equipped with an interactive user interface and high resolution display for providing a variety of desktop PC-like functions.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a wearable device/appliance (a wrist watch) capable of wirelessly accessing information and equipped with an interactive user interface capable of providing time keeping functions equipped with an interactive user interface for displaying a graphic watchface in a manner that conserves display real estate enabling the concurrent display of other textual content.
According to the invention, there is provided a system and method for efficiently for efficiently utilizing display space provided for a wearable appliance providing time keeping functions, the method comprising steps of providing graphic display of a watch face having minute and hour hand indicators for the time keeping functions, the watchface capable of being displayed in one of circular and elliptical orientations; and, enabling the display of textual content in the display in remaining portions of watchface in both circular and elliptical orientation. Specifically, for the circular watchface orientation, one or more lines of text may be displayed in side portions of said display, with the text rotated clockwise or anti-clockwise depending upon the wearer""s viewing preference. Further, for the elliptical watchface orientation, one or more lines of text may be displayed in a normal orientation in top and bottom portions of the display. Preferably, for the elliptical watchface orientation, the length of either or both the minute and hour hands are varied in accordance with the angular position of the hands. For instance, the length of either minute and hour hand or both may be shortened when the minute and hour hand are positioned along a minor axis of the elliptical watch face. Similarly, the length of either minute and hour hand or both may be extended when the minute and hour hand are positioned along a major axis of the elliptical watch face.